STAR CHOICES: Francois Girard, director of 'Silk'

"Silk" was a labor of love for French-Canadian director Francois Girard. Based on Alessandro Baricco's best-selling 1996 novel, it is a film he has long wanted to make. "I had to wait five years before the rights became available and I jumped on it," Girard said in an interview in Tokyo.

A 19th-century period piece about love and obsession, "Silk" follows a young Frenchman, Herve Joncour (Michael Pitt), as he travels to Japan in order to smuggle silkworm eggs back to his local silk factory. While in a snowy mountain village ruled by Jubei Hara (Koji Yakusho), Herve catches a glimpse of a beautiful young woman (Sei Ashina) and finds himself unable to forget her even when he returns to his wife, Helene (Keira Knightley), in France.

"It's a little bit like the elevator syndrome," Girard explained. "The elevator doors open, you see someone, and five seconds later the doors close, and you think you could've spent your life with that person ・[but] in the end what you project onto that person is something that is very near you."

Girard was not the only one to fall in love with the novel; Knightley shared his desire to see the story transferred to the big screen. "We met in New York, and I discovered that Keira was a great lover of the book. And not only that, she actually tried to get the rights to do the film adaptation. But she couldn't get them because I had them," Girard said. "The fact that she accepted to do a smaller part in a smaller movie for a much smaller fee says a lot about her. She can put celebrity aside and dedicate herself to a piece of material in a way that very few actors can."

Girard's drive for authenticity led him to film the scenes set in Japan here, which presented him with difficulties.

"As in most countries, villages from the mid-19th century have disappeared. So we ended up concluding we had to build that village."

This also proved problematic. The specialist carpenters who were hired to build the village in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, initially refused to do so, knowing that it would be burned down in the end. They were only persuaded when told the village would be immortalized in film.

Despite the challenges, Girard is extremely pleased he worked in Japan.

"The Japanese film industry is so rich and competent and brilliant and deep," he said. "We got to shoot in two of the greatest film cultures in the world, Italy and Japan."

--By Cameron Eeles, Contributing Writer

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"Silk" opens Saturday at Nichigeki 3 in Tokyo and elsewhere.(IHT/Asahi: January 18,2008)